Ladybird Ballet

Guess what? I was working away on my Sew Bossy dress, and nearly finished, with only the hem left to go. Exciting! And then I tried it on properly after attaching the buttons. Yeah. Even though I’d been a good girl and tried it on a couple of times while making it, somehow everything went horribly wrong. Let’s just say – there’s gonna be a fair bit of unpicking of top stitching and gathers, and re-positioning of buttons and button holes, before it’s going to look any good.

So I got grumpy and made something else to cheer me up.

With ladybirds on it, because who can be grumpy when sewing ladybirds, right?!

I wanted to use a pattern I was pretty sure would work on me (didn’t want to risk two disasters in a row!), so I pulled out my trusty La Sylphide pattern from Papercut. I’ve made this up a couple of times before, in the dress version, and they both get a lot of wear.

My first thought was to make this up in the dress again, but turned out I didn’t have enough fabric. After a bit of mucking around with pattern placement, I figured I could get the peplum blouse out of the ladybirds. Been meaning to try the blouse for a while, to see if peplums actually look ok on me or not (or if it was just the knit fabric ones that look terrible on me).

I lengthened the neck tie by about 25cm in total, having learnt before that I like more length in my pussy bow. (Random sentence, no?)

I also lowered the bust darts by about 1.5cm, since they tend to hit too high on me. (A problem I have with pretty much all bust darts, ever. Vintage or modern. Maybe my girls are just in a weird place or something….)

And since I was eking this out of not-quite-enough fabric, I also shortened the sleeves, to a length that fit onto the fabric. 😉 (Since I shortened them, I didn’t bother with the interfaced hem on the sleeves either – I figured this fabric was stiff enough to cope without interfacing on the sleeves, and sure enough, all is good.)

And coz we all know how much I like sewing with hammers, I used white snap fasteners instead of buttons. Oh, I do love snap fasteners, so much fun to put on (and to take off again, heh 😉

The verdict? I’m liking it! And I think it’s converted me to peplums actually looking ok on me. (Maybe I’ll brave a couple of my 1940’s peplum top patterns now….)

Plus, it has ladybirds on it. What’s not to love about that?!?

To define where the peplum flares out, I’ll probably always sling a belt around the waist. I just like it better that way – it’s quite a busy fabric, and the belt breaks it up a bit and shows off the lines of the blouse more I reckon.

And check it out – we found a wall that matched my shoes and hair and belt! Matchy-matchy, oh yeah!